The imminent closure of Graves Gallery in the Central Library building has been a talking point in news and social media since it was announced last week, with the council making the announcement and explaining the situation here: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/news/2026/sheffields-central-library-city-archives-and-graves-gallery-move-closer-landmark.
Readers who remember the abortive Chinese scheme of 2017 (see https://www.hhbs.org.uk/2017/01/21/central-library-2/) may fear the worst. However, we are in a very different place today. Back then a Council largely hostile to heritage was soon to abandon a promise of a Conservation Area in Castlegate, brand such areas a potential “brake on development” and threaten their existence, slash its Planning staff by a third and consider eliminating Conservation Officers altogether.
By contrast, today it has recently extended two Conservation Areas (including the long-promised Castlegate), employs two full-time Conservation Officers and a Heritage Development Officer, supports a Local Heritage List and has adopted both a Heritage Strategy and a Culture Strategy. We feel that the statement from the Council shows positive intent, and, importantly, that they want to get the development right both for the building and for the collections it holds, and we hope this is the necessary kickstart for important repairs and improvements. Even so, we will be keeping a close and critical eye on progress.
An important historic building for Sheffield
This really is one of the city’s best-loved buildings: for its architecture and interior furnishing; for the many memories and sometimes life-changing experiences it has created; and for what it represents: a place for everybody to find knowledge. In fact, the carved figure on the corner of Surrey Street and Tudor Square represents Knowledge, and it holds the Egyptian-inspired ankh and asp, symbols of the good and evil between which knowledge gives us the power to choose.
Sheffield was the first town in Yorkshire to adopt the Public Libraries Act of 1850. In 1856 the first small Library was opened in the Mechanics’ Institute in Surrey Street and issued 114,275 books. Next door was the Music Hall, opened in 1823, which closed in 1910 and was purchased as an extension to the library. Despite this expansion libraries were described as being in a “parlous state” until the appointment of R. J. Gordon as Chief Librarian in February 1921. A proposal was made to the Council to build an entirely new library on the same site, but they failed to act, and instead there was a programme of reconstruction to improve access to the Mechanics’ Institute and Music Hall buildings.
The new plan for Sheffield created in 1924 by influential town planner Patrick Abercrombie proposed a new, grand civic square with buildings including law courts, a college and a replacement library. Even so, when J. P. Lamb took over as Chief Librarian in March 1927 the Council were still wavering. In 1929 J. G. Graves, the mail-order mogul who became one of the city’s greatest benefactors, took the matter in hand, proposing an art gallery for which he would pay £20,000, plus a further £10,000 contribution to the library. He would also make a gift of nearly 400 pictures, founding Sheffield’s extensive publicly-owned art collection.
This was enough to spur the Council into action, meeting the remainder of the total £95,000 cost and beginning work in November 1930 on the site of the Mechanics’ Institute. Once this first part was completed in August 1932, operations moved from the Music Hall and a second phase was duly completed by May 1934. It was officially opened on 5th July 1934 by HRH the Duke of York, who would later become King George VI.
The official opening brochure described its external design by Sheffield City Architect W. G. Davies as “a modern conception of the Renaissance style”. Around the main doorway are medallions representing Literature, Music, Drama, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Mathematics, Chemistry and Astronomy by the famous identical twin sculptors Alfred and William Tory, who with their father Frank did so much to beautify Sheffield. The art gallery is concealed behind a blind parapet, so that the pictures are lit only through skylights. Like the City Hall of two years earlier it is something of a mix of styles: the fluted pilasters on Surrey Street are Classical, but the Egyptian symbolism and geometric glazing bars show a strong Art Deco influence which continues inside in the oak furniture. In the basement a steel book stack was designed so flexibly that any book of any size could be stored anywhere. Other features included a centralised vacuum cleaning system and synchronised electric clocks.
It is also a remarkably innovative building. In addition to the library and art gallery it contained a theatre, described as a Lecture Hall but which right from the start was intended to be used for performance. The opening brochure says “The platform (or stage) has been planned, and can be equipped, for stage performances, and three rooms adjoining the stage are available as dressing rooms.” This use was impeded by limitations on the use of lecture rooms under the Income Tax Acts, but after Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough (then First Lord of the Admiralty) intervened with the Chancellor performance became a viable use. Dressing rooms and stage lighting were improved and it was made available for hire from February 1947.
The theatre had a further intended use: the seats were movable, so that it could serve as an exhibition space. All these functions in a single building makes the Central Library and Graves Gallery one of the first combined arts centres in the country, of a type that became far more popular as city centres were redeveloped after the war. It may be the very first with the specific combination of library, gallery and theatre. It certainly met the aspiration to be “a centre for the intellectual life of the city” with “provision made for all types of cultural societies”.
It wasn’t long before even this splendid new building was seen as insufficient. Sheffield Replanned (1945) remarks that “the necessity to provide a site for an extension of the Central Library may soon become urgent; the site adjacent to the Library between Tudor Street and Norfolk Street on the north side of Surrey Street has been regarded as best for this purpose.”
Postscript
One other feature mentioned in the brochure will strike a chord with readers: “The remarkable interest in local history shown by Sheffield citizens has inspired the planning of the spacious Sheffield Collection Room.” The Local Studies Library still exists, now established in the former Reference Library. Sheffielders really do care about their history, and about their historic buildings, and it has been a long-standing source of anger that such a fine building has been so neglected. It deserves better, and so do we.
